


A Little Motivation

by markhyuckles



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, It gets a bit emotional, M/M, Mark Lee (NCT) is Whipped, The others are mentioned in flashbacks and stuff but only briefly, Yukhei is a sweetheart, and they were ROOMMATES, but its fine, mark cries im sorry, ohmygod they were roommates, theres a lot of statsitical testing talk but its fine, xiaojun is literally just mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markhyuckles/pseuds/markhyuckles
Summary: “So? What do you want?”Mark knew what he wanted. The thing he wanted more than solving that dumb fucking question. That set his heart alight at the thought and made his stomach turn. But he wasn’t prepared to just take it from Lucas.“Mark?”- OR -Mark is struggling, a lot, with an assignment. His friend, Lucas, offers him some motivation





	A Little Motivation

**Author's Note:**

> HEY  
> this is a thing. that I made. bc I was craving some lumark I love those fuckers.  
> Also if you want you should follow my twitter @/mxsserendipity  
> Also also sorry for any mistakes. I have looked it thru I'm just dumb and gay I cant spell. plus its not beta'd lol 
> 
> kay enjoy

Stats.

Mark hated it. With a passion.

“What the fuck does Chi Squared mean anyway?” He muttered to himself, hunched over the pile of paper and textbooks cluttered around him. At this point, he was prepared to throw his calculator directly out of the window. And then himself.

“You alright there, bud?” Mark turned in his seat, his roommate and friend, Lucas staring over at him with a smirk that made Mark groan. He brushed his hands through his hair, looking back at the jumble of numbers and symbols peering back at him.

“No,” Mark said. “I’ve been staring at the same fucking page for the past 2 hours and I still can’t decide whether this is nominal or ordinal data.”

“Yeah I have no idea what that means,” Lucas said. He moved into the room, perching himself on the edge of Mark’s bed, mug of tea in his hand.

“You don’t have to know, fucking History major.” Lucas chuckled at that, offering Mark the tea. “I thought it was yours?” He asked. Lucas nodded.

“You seem to need it more, though.”

Sipping the tea, Mark decided to try the question again. He looked between his textbook and the question, back and forth continuously. He tried out different equations as Lucas watched YouTube videos on his bed. He’d gone from sitting at the edge of it to lying like a starfish across the whole thing. Mark would have laughed, but Spearman’s Rho was staring back at him calling him a little bitch. He sighed.

“I can’t do it.” He finalised, throwing his pen with a clatter. Lucas laughed again.

“You say this every single time, Mark. And every single time, you end up getting the best grades in your class.” He was sat up again, phone discarded somewhere in Mark’s now crumpled duvet. He could see the look of defeat already slipping into Mark’s features, the patterns of blue dusted under his eyes as they dropped. Lucas realised just how late it was.

Stretching over, Lucas managed to grab the back of the swivel chair. Mark squeaked in surprise when suddenly, he was being dragged away from his stats work and was instead being turned in his seat to find Lucas smiling at him. His heart jumped.

Lucas was looking at him, eyes wide and bright like always and how was Mark not supposed to stop in his tracks? He wouldn’t say he had a crush on Lucas, really but…

He had a crush on Lucas.

His friends were the first ones to notice. They’d been sat in a local café, Mark blatantly ignoring Renjun and Donghyuck’s dumb argument about whether cereal was a soup when Lucas had walked in. He didn’t notice Mark and the others at first, heading straight up to the counter to order. He chatted with the barista, Xiaojun he thought was his name, and then turned to leave.

“Mark?”

“Hey, Lucas!” Mark had scrambled, face flushing as he prayed that Lucas hadn’t caught him staring. But he hadn’t, grinning at Mark as he strode up to the table. Donghyuck and Renjun had stopped arguing at this point, watching the interaction in front of them with matching faces of smug satisfaction. Mark ignored them.

“Oh, there’s this film on Netflix I really want to see,” Lucas had said. “Will you watch it with me tonight if I order pizza?”

“You don’t have to order pizza, I’d watch it with you anyway,” Mark muttered, looking up at Lucas with stars in his eyes.

Once he’d left, peach iced tea in his hand, Donghyuck pounced.

“Oh my fucking God,” He’d said.

“What?”

“You like Lucas, don’t you?”

Mark had laughed. That slowly died down when he realised Donghyuck was not laughing with him.

“Oh, you’re serious?” Donghyuck and Renjun nodded. “No, I don’t!”

“Yeah, you do.” That had been Renjun.

“No, he’s just my friend.”

“Oh, so that means your eyes do that and your heart does whatever monstrosities it was doing then when you talk to me and Donghyuck?”

Mark paused.

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

And Mark hadn’t looked back ever since.

“Mark?” Lucas said suddenly, pulling him out of his little trip down memory lane. “Did you hear me?”

“No, sorry, I zoned out.”

“Babs, you’re so tired,” he muttered. Mark had to remind himself to breathe. “When is it due?” Mark thought for a moment, brain frazzled, before answering.

“Wednesday.”

Lucas sighed.

“Mark, it’s Monday.” His hands rested on Mark’s thighs, rubbing gentle circles into his skin. “You still have tomorrow.”

Ignoring the hands tracing patterns on his legs and sending warmth through his skin, Mark rubbed at his eyes and groaned.

“But I have to work tomorrow night I don’t have the time,” he mumbled. He didn’t even notice the tears in his eyes until they were running down his cheeks in pearly rivers. Lucas gasped, reaching up to brush them out of Mark’s face who caved into himself.

“Mark please don’t cry,” he begged, stroking Mark’s cheeks gently. “If you cry, I’ll cry and then we’ll be fucked because Yuta is out, and he can’t stop us.”

It made Mark giggle, a little, through the salty tracks running down his face and Lucas smiled. He calmed down quickly after, sweater paws coming up to wipe at the stray tears still pattering his skin as he snuffled.

“’M Sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be sorry, Markie.” Lucas’ hands had left his cheeks, Mark having to supress the whine jumping up his throat at the loss of warmth. “What if I gave you some motivation, huh?”

Mark looked up. His eyes were still blurred but he could see Lucas perfectly.

“Motivation?”

“Anything you want, I’ll give it to you if you can finish that last page- “

“No, I can’t finish the page, Yukhei.” Mark shook his head.

“Yes, you can, I know you can. You just need… a spark.” Mark rolled his eyes, the faintest smile dancing on his lips. Lucas beamed. “So? What do you want?”

Mark knew what he wanted. The thing he wanted more than solving that dumb fucking question. That set his heart alight at the thought and made his stomach turn. But he wasn’t prepared to just take it from Lucas.

“Mark?”

“I… I can’t,” he said. His eyes focused down at his fingers, picking at the skin around his nails. Lucas always told him off for it, tried to get him to stop. Said that Mark’s hands were too pretty to ruin. It was a shame Mark was a terrible listener.

“Why not?” Lucas asked.

“It’s not something you can give to me, Lucas.”

His ears seemed to perk up at that, sitting up straighter as he watched Mark with a new-found interest.

“Now that just sounds like a challenge,” he smirked. “Try me.”

Mark mumbled back a no and Lucas’ head dropped. For a while, Mark watched him and he could tell that the cogs were working in his mind, trying to find a way to get Mark to crack.

 _I’d like to see him try,_ he thought.

Lucas’s head snapped up.

_Oh no._

“Donghyuck.” Lucas stated. Mark looked at him, eyebrows raised.

“Donghyuck?”

“I’ll ring Donghyuck, he’ll tell me what it is you want.” He turned, scrambling to find his phone in the mess of covers on the bed.

Within a second, Mark jumped at Lucas, grabbing at his shoulders and pulling him away in an attempt to get to the phone first. They struggled and wrestled, Lucas simply giggling and tickling Mark. It was all he had to do to get the other to surrender.

He retrieved the phone finally, yelling in triumph when he did. Mark still tried to reach out for it as he sat back on the chair. Lucas simply pushed his face away with his gigantic hands.

“Lucas don’t,” Mark begged once he’d gotten his hand off his face. But Lucas unlocked the phone, light illuminating his face and Mark had to ignore the sparkles in his eyes. “Lucas please.”

“Then tell me.” His hand was hovering over the call button, Donghyuck’s smiling face glaring up at Mark like a red fucking flag.

He knew that if Lucas rang him, asked what Mark could be so desperate for but still wouldn’t let Lucas give him, he’d spill. There was no way he wouldn’t, Mark thought. He was too nice as strange as it seemed, wanting the best for Mark. He always argued that Lucas was good for him.

 _‘Yeah, too good’_ Mark would always say.

His finger was seconds away from the button.

“Lucas- “

“Mark, nothing you want would be too much for me to give you. I’d give you anything in this world if it made you happy. So please tell me or so help me God I will ring the devil himself and – “

“A kiss.”

Lucas froze.

“What?”

Mark gulped, sitting upright and holding his head high. If he was going out, then so was the last shred of dignity he had.

“I want a kiss.”

For a while, Lucas didn’t do much. Mark watched as he looked at him, eyebrows furrowed and panicked. He felt his heart rate speed up to rates he was sure were unsafe.

And then, Lucas smiled.

“Okay.”

Mark’s eyes widened.

“Seriously?” He asked and Lucas nodded, his smile still wide.

“Not to be incredibly selfish or anything, but I really wanted to kiss you anyway. Looks like we both win.” As he spoke, Lucas chuckled, and Mark had to process what he’d heard. Lucas didn’t eve give him the time. “Okay, less talking, more Whitney Houston- “

“Mann Whitney U – “

“Whatever.” He pushed Mark’s chair back to his desk, handing him his pen and sitting beside him. “I’m gonna be here and if I think you’re too tired, I’m gonna make you stop. Your health is more important than some dumb stats work, Mark.”

Mark looked down as he nodded his head.

“Okay.”

He went to his work, looking back at the page. It was still just as incomplete as before and he sighed. As he picked up his calculator, Mark noticed Lucas move in his peripheral. He didn’t think much of it until he felt the soft press of lips on his cheek. He gasped.

“You can do it.”

Suddenly, the page looked a lot less intimidating.

After a while, and a couple of trial errors that ended with Mark trying to snap his pen in half (and Lucas kissing his cheek again,) he managed to get the hang of it. He flew through the questions as quickly as he could. Sometimes, he would stumble. But he’d remember what Lucas had said to him and would carry on just as fiercely. It felt like heaven when he got to the end.

“I did it!” Mark yelled, slamming his textbook shut. Beside him, Lucas jumped at the sound. “Lucas, I fucking did it.”

“I told you, Mark!”

Screeching in delight, Mark didn’t even hesitate as he jumped into Lucas’ outstretched arms. They fell back onto the bed, Mark’s laughter muffled in Lucas’ hoodie. The smell of his peach shower gel was welcoming as he snuggled further into Lucas’ chest, feeling his heart beat under the fabric. He could feel his arms around his waist, rubbing Mark’s hips gently as they sat up.

And Mark realised how close they were.

He could see every detail of Lucas’ face, from the faint sun kissed freckles scattered across his nose, to the patterns of brown in his eyes only visible up so close. His hands still rested on Mark’s hips and he blushed when he realised he was sat in Lucas’ lap.

“So?” Lucas said, gaining Mark’s attention. “Are you going to take your prize?” He smiled as he spoke, and Mark rolled his eyes.

“You’re not just a prize for me to win,” he began, sliding his arms up above Lucas’ shoulders. “I’ve liked you for so long now and every day it gets harder and harder to let go of how much you mean to me. So, you’re not just an objective to me, Lucas. You’re everything and more.”

Silence.

And then-

“Oh my God, I love you.”

That was the last thing Mark heard before Lucas moved forward. He held Mark close, hands gripping the back of his sweater as he captured his lips with his own. And just like Lucas, the kiss was everything and more. It set his stomach alight with a comforting spark as Lucas kissed him, his lips as soft as Mark had always imagined.

He became dizzy, moving away for a second to catch his breath before he was surging back in for another. And he could feel Lucas’ smile against him, licking at his bruised lips and making Mark gasp. His hands found their way into the hair at the nape of Lucas’ neck, tugging ever so lightly when Lucas did something that made his stomach flip.

When they finally pulled away, Mark was breathless. His forehead rested against Lucas’ as they both caught back their breath, smiling at each other through the daze.

“I love you too,” Mark whispered. He pulled himself away from Lucas, crawling into bed and pulling the other with him. Lucas turned off the lamp, drenching themselves in darkness. But Mark could still see the stars in Lucas’ eyes reflecting the moonlight outside as he lay next to him.

And maybe they woke up the next morning, entangled in each other’s arms and Yuta screeching at them from the doorway but they didn’t care.

Not when they got to wake up next to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are really appreciated, we love validation in this household :)))  
> oh and anything I say about statistical testing is lowkey probably incorrect I have no idea how it works I just know their names. and statistics sucks   
> muah


End file.
